Fuck Buttons

There is absolutely nothing less fun than a noise show, which I had determined in advance this Fuck Buttons one would not be, being as on the duo’s truly excellent new Tarot Sport they’ve jettisoned all the hollering/noise in favor of hyper-sleek electronic post-rock with a Max Martin level of sheen. And then I get to the Empty Bottle on Saturday and what’s on stage to greet me? A guy playing notes on a guitar that do not correspond in rhythm, tone or duration with the sounds coming out of his amp, a woman making unearthly growl-yelps into a microphone, and a dude hunched over a crate filled with wires, staring intently downward, glancing intently rightward at the other musicians with furrowed brow as if to anticipate the exact correct moment at which, with sweat dripping down his forehead and down the curve of his nose, he would unblinkingly adjust a small knob.

So it’s almost without regard that what openers Growing were producing was a fairly remarkable assemblage of static and noise, intersticed with shards of riffage and a rigid percussive throb, because the band onstage was such a joyless non-band it was impossible to shake the feeling that I was at like a noise mega-show, Pitchfork-approved, wherein I could certainly furrow a brow convincingly, but, really, would rather not do that whole thing, if my options were opened up. The crowd at the Empty Bottle was big and enthusiastic, of varied makeup and almost confusingly intoxicated. There were sober noise scene mainstays doing that arrhythmic nod thing they do along with stumbling flaskdrunk first-timers to the venue along with, like, club kids.

Most of them arrived within the brief space after Growing hauled their Serious Musical Equipment offstage and before Fuck Buttons opened up their suitcase full of shit on a card table and plugged in. The speed with which this change occurred didn’t really give me time to adjust my critical faculties properly before the headliners seized the stage like they were the fucking Rolling Stones, practically high-kicking at the audience, direct eye-contact, not quite smiling but ecstatic, at least, to be there, each drop or mammoth synth line shooting out like a fucking bolt of lightning through the blue-flashing room, the band hopping maniacally in pretty much every manner in which one can hop. The set list was the new album, more or less, delivered without hitch or break, and was well-received by we alternately trashed and entranced audience members, pumped as it was at a volume that filled in the dark matter of the human brain and delivered screaming onward with a whiplash momentum that the proper album lacks. This was not a noise show, not what Fuck Buttons were doing, a fact made clear by the almost tribal explosions of dancing that spattered the set, but rather something else entirely, a sort of epic new pop music blasted across post-rock and across the walls and cut off at last in a split second stunned hush to the glowing red audience, who yelped riotously in appreciation and then stumbled out afterward with liquefied eardrums and pleasure furrowing their cold little brows. Not liking this band is incorrect.